Financial Mail and Business Day

Cape Town can help poor

Brian Kantor develops an important argument for the City of Cape Town to spend more on infrastructure and services to maintain property values for ratepayers in the city (“More publicprivate partnerships, please”, June 4).

The city has plentiful reserves and a low level of debt, in stark contrast to the weak financial position of the national government. However, the case for increasing its spending goes beyond protecting the property values of existing ratepayers. The city has a constitutional mandate to extend essential infrastructure and services to poor and marginalised communities living without sanitation, clean water, electricity and refuse collection. Enhanced investment in the built environment and community services would provide an economic stimulus post-Covid and create jobs and skills to counter rising unemployment.

Targeted public spending on the development of land and infrastructure to accommodate future growth could lever in private investment and generate higher tax revenues to help cover the expenditure. This is the beauty of investing in sensible urban projects and programmes — it generates public goods, spurs economic multipliers, provides pathways out of poverty, instils hope, and ultimately pays for itself. The city should not be sitting on vast amounts of cash when it could be used much more productively to help get us out of the economic and social crisis.

Prof Ivan Turok

Human Sciences Research Council and University of the Free State

OPINION

en-za

2021-06-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://timesmedia2.pressreader.com/article/281758452237440

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